In this important commentary, human rights campaigner and writer Igor Blazevic offers us an insight into the games being played by the Myanmar junta to divide-and-rule and cause problems for the Spring Revolution opposition as we enter 2023 – and possible solutions.
Understanding the junta’s current strategy
In military operations, when one plans an offensive, one often creates a false threat. The purpose is to make the opponent concentrate their own troops at a particular spot where the real attack will not happen. This will create weak spots somewhere else in the opponent’s defence lines. False threats and surprise attacks, if done properly, are effective ways to make significant breakthroughs and gains.
Myanmar junta leader Min Aung Hlaing’s criminal gang in uniform might – or might not – stage a deception with their call for a national election. However, at this point in time, the Myanmar junta’s talk about elections could be considered a false threat, which makes many Spring Revolutionary forces concerned and busy. It is like throwing a series of signal and smoke bombs, one after another, to draw our attention and to turn our focus away from the side where the real attack is currently already happening.
This real attack has several dimensions. One is – the systematic and intentional creation of a huge humanitarian crisis. MAH’s murderous army is following the clear script of a Russian military strategy. Russia has applied that strategy in Chechnya. It has applied it in Syria and is applying it now in Ukraine. This strategy instructs, once you cannot defeat your opponent militarily, you should target the civilian population. You should hit the civilian population and civilian infrastructure with disproportionally heavy force. You hit it as hard as you can and indiscriminately. You do that systematically, ruthlessly and on a mass scale. This tactic is pushing a huge number of civilians into a situation of “dramatic humanitarian urgency”. Displaced civilians without livelihood and shelter become a burden to the resistance forces, a burden they are not able to carry.
This is what MAH’s terrorist army is doing now, intentionally and systematically. This is the “stick” side of the strategy – but there is also a “carrot” side.
The carrot side is not played primarily by junta representatives. That would be too obvious and would not work as effectively. The carrot side is played by international actors such as the Japanese representative Sasakawa and various “dialogue and negotiation mediators and facilitators” funded and supported by Switzerland, Joint Peace Fund, maybe Norwegians and maybe some others as well. Sasakawa is waving the carrot blatantly and unscrupulously. The Swiss embassy, JPF, maybe Norwegians and maybe some others are playing it more low profile, behind the scenes, discreetly.
There is a real danger that the UN Special Envoy and Indonesia as the new ASEAN chair will fall into the same trap and play the role of “carrots” as well. Noeleen Heyzer has achieved absolutely nothing since her appointment. She must be frustrated and eager to make a second try. Indonesia is taking over the
ASEAN chairmanship after Cambodia’s failure to achieve anything meaningful regarding the Myanmar crisis. Indonesia is a bigger heavyweight and would like to deliver more and better. So, both the UN Special Envoy and Indonesia have a strong desire to “do something” and to do it as soon as possible. Prevailing consensus is that humanitarian aid is the only way to achieve some positive development. This is how the UN and ASEAN can very easily play the “carrot” side of the junta’s carrot and stick strategy.
Numerous interlocutors, mediators, consultants, emissaries, diplomats and aid workers are these days approaching ethnic stakeholders offering humanitarian aid if only they accept a temporary ceasefire and start dialogue with the junta representatives. Even token dialogue is seen as a “positive move in right direction”. If this happens, the promise goes that we, the UN agencies and internationals, will be able to deliver aid to IDPs and civilians on “your territory”. If only you stop resisting for a while, there is a chance that the junta will allow us to deliver you aid.
This is serous temptation for the Ethnic Revolutionary Organisations or EROs when they have tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of civilians and IDPs in their yard, without sufficient food, shelter, and medicine, and deeply traumatized and exhausted, strangled by the “Four Cuts” dished out by the junta forces and further terrorized by air bombardments.
What the junta wants is for some EROs to accept this deal. If one will do that, all others will start to recalculate what are their options. If two or three EROs accept this humanitarian lure, this can trigger a domino effect – many more might follow in making their own temporary ceasefires.
As one very knowledgeable and sharp minded insider has observed – the junta does not need to break the alliance between the NUG and EROs. The junta is probably aware that they cannot achieve that – at least not at this point in time. However, they can make the alliance less effective - less action oriented, less initiative taking and less coordinated. That is enough for the junta at this point.
Any, even very partial ceasefires and dialogue about humanitarian aid will give an opportunity to the junta representatives to also make business offers to the ERO leaders and commanders. What follows after the humanitarian aid promise is a “corruption offer”. MAH emissaries and junta commanders are already reaching out to anybody who is ready to talk with them to offer business licences and enrichment opportunities. The goal is to shift as many political and military actors to the path of “normalization through elections”. One just needs to ask the leader of the Shan Nationalities Democratic Party and commanders of the PNO what business deals and licences they have received to enter into the junta camp.
To the extent in which the junta will be able to achieve temporary de-escalation of fighting in as many as possible frontlines with the EROs, that will give the junta an opportunity to concentrate forces and brutality against the resistance in Magway and Sagaing. This is what the international aid community do not see – or they pretend that they do not see. Temporary ceasefires between the junta and any of EROs will not lead to a gradual de-escalation of violence. It will be just be the opposite – it will lead to an even more fierce and even more brutal onslaught on civilians in the territories of other EROs and on the Sagaing and Magway region.
Let’s be clear – the junta-staged “elections” might or might not happen. However, at this moment the proposal of “elections” is a false flag attack. The real attack is waged with the air force against the
civilian population and with a deceptive offer to the EROs to accept temporary ceasefires in exchange for humanitarian aid. The purpose of this attack is to create as much pressure as possible on the alliance between the NUG and EROs. The desired result is making the alliance less effective. An even better result for the junta would be a break-up of the alliance.
In order to effectively counter the junta’s deception with fake elections and to prevent the junta from using once more its traditional “divide and rule” strategy, the actors of the anti-junta alliance, particularly its core actors with real power - those with territory, legitimacy and weapons - need to strengthen their alliance.
Underlying the potential crack in the NUG–EROs alliance
There is one important underlying reason why the alliance between the NUG and EROs might crack under pressure. It is better to be aware of it and to address this underlying problem with political courage, wisdom and resolve.
The primary goal of the popular mass uprising called the Spring Revolution is to reject Min Aung Hlaing’s coup, to prevent the military junta from consolidating power and to remove the military from politics. (So far it has been less clearly articulated, but the Spring Revolution goals also implicate removal of the military capture of the country’s economy).
The primary goal of the EROs is to secure a high degree of autonomy and self-determination of their own ethnic group in their own territories.
The NUG has grown up from three different sources – from the NLD’s overwhelming electoral victory in the 2020 elections; from the non-violent popular nationwide mass uprising called the Spring Revolution and the Civil Disobedience Movement; and from the decision of some of the EROs to join the anti-coup alliance.
Once the NUG (and the NUCC) have been formed in the midst of the post-coup turmoil and violence, compromise has been agreed between the three groups driving and leading the broad anti-junta uprising (NLD, Spring Revolution and CDM actors and EROs) that the common political goal will be federal democracy.
If we want to anchor the strategy of the revolution against the junta in the real-politics of Myanmar, we need to have a clear understanding that there is a difference in what could be an acceptable outcome of the current struggle for different actors of the broad anti-junta alliance.
The NLD, Spring Revolution actors, CDM-ers and the NUG can achieve its aims only if they defeat the MAH junta and if they remove the military from politics. They do not have other options. It is either – or. Either you remove MAH and the junta from future Myanmar politics or you will be crushed, defeated and severely punished.
EROs have more options to achieve their core goal of autonomy and self-determination. They can achieve it through the defeat of MAH’s junta and through the formation of a federal democratic Myanmar. However, they can achieve their objective also if at some point in time
they make a strategic pivot from aligning themselves with the NUG and by making a deal with a significantly weakened military junta. A significantly weakened junta – which exists now - is ready to make (corrupt) compromises with the EROs that are ready to switch to the junta’s side. The junta is not ready for any type of compromise with the Bamar resistance and the Spring Revolution. The EROs can have a high degree of autonomy and self-governing institutions on “their territories” even if the junta remains in control over the Bamar regions of Myanmar.
MAH, the junta and the insidious "facilitators of peace and dialogue" are of course well aware of this underlying difference of core objectives between the NUG and Spring Revolution actors on the one side, and EROs on the other side.
This is the crack in the NUG-EROs alliance on which the junta is putting pressure.
The junta is signalling to the ERO leaders and to all those who have some influence on the EROs’ strategic decision-making: “the NUG cannot prevail”.
Their message is - we, the junta, have enough military power to achieve final and full victory. We have support from Russia, India, Thailand and China. We have enough revenues from gas and other natural resources. We can heavily punish your civilian population. We can bomb your schools, concerts and burn your villages. We can take hostage any of your prominent leaders as we have done with Reverend Samson. We can cut food, fuel and medicine coming to your IDPs. But we can also allow aid deliveries to go through. We can give you seats in a future proportional representation parliament. We can give you lucrative business licences and monopolies. We will tolerate any illegal business you might run to make money. We will also give you a better “federal” deal – you will be able to keep your own militia and you will be able to run your own legal and illegal business, and you will be able to have your own self-rule territory. Just make a deal with us, stop supporting PDFs, stop cooperating with the NUG and let us defeat them. Then we can have our own “federation of greed and corruption”.
Wake up call
Actors of the anti-junta alliance have in last few months paralyzed themselves in passionate discussions and disagreements about the future, which might never come. Instead, what is needed now is to re-focus on making this future possible and coming. What is needed is to realign key actors of the Spring Revolution uprising (those who control territory, have legitimacy and guns) in a firm and active, initiative-taking political and military alliance and what is needed for this alliance is to talk with “synchronized talking point”s with the people of Myanmar and with international actors.
Without such an approach, the future for which the Spring Heroes have sacrificed will never come. Otherwise, the federalist and self-determination dream of Myanmar nationalities will miss the historic opportunity to be fulfilled. Otherwise, the democratic aspirations of the
people of Myanmar to live in the country without fear and repression will be delayed for at least the next 20 years.
Key political stakeholders in the democratic camp and self-determination camp need to meet each other. They need to meet each other in real-time and not online in Zoom meeting calls. And they need to have honest and straightforward political dialogue in which each side will assure the other that if we win together, everybody will get what he or she is striving and struggling for.
Key political stakeholders need to bet on trust and to bet on a positive win-win vision, instead of a paralyzing and weakening resistance through mistrust and old grievances. Having in mind how enormous is current suffering in Myanmar and how big is the historic opportunity to bring real change, it is sometimes mindboggling how anybody could put more passion into old grievances instead of capturing the opportunity and investing in a better future that is within their reach.
If key actors of the current anti-junta resistance will reaffirm their political alliance and if they will speak with the people in the way President Zelenskiy is constantly speaking with the Ukrainian people, such an alliance will be able to sustain a nationwide public rejection of the junta and disobedience. Political alliance of key stakeholders will be able to continue to stretch the Myanmar military to breaking point and defeat MAH’s criminal junta. Such a political alliance will be able to stand vis-à-vis international players as a true sovereign representing the people of the country, instead of being in a position of weakness and begging.
A political alliance of the key stakeholders will also encourage all others to join it – because everybody wants to be on the side of the winner.
Leaders in the democratic camp must find political courage and make decisive decisions to match the historic opportunity. They need to make a credible, clear and firm promise to the ethnic stakeholders that in the future Myanmar they will have the self-determination they have been striving for since the Panglong Agreement.
Leaders in the self-determination camp need to exit from their safe corner of their own long-standing demands for self-rule of their own ethnic group and they need also to invest in the “broader national project” which could be a “win-win situation” for everybody.
In a future Myanmar that is not repressed and plundered by MAH’s uniformed kleptocratic gang and in a Myanmar in which the military is removed from politics and economy, there will be enough space for compromise, and there will be enough wealth for reconstruction and rehabilitation of shattered lives and for the socio-economic development of everybody, as individuals and as ethnic and religious identity groups.
Keeping the alliance alive and strong
As I have tried to describe, the NUG and EROs alliance is coming under pressure from various sides. The junta is relatively skilfully applying its carrot-and-stick, divide-and-rule strategy.
Be warned - numerous self-interested domestic players who did not have the courage to join the Spring Revolution now see the opportunity for themselves if the NUG, Spring Revolution and the NLD are marginalized and removed from the political future of Myanmar. They see opportunity for themselves if the domestic political dynamic is brought back to the “three sides” negotiations between the military, EROs and non-NLD Bamar “democratic” and “national” political parties. That is why they may be ready to join MAH’s deception with elections.
Some international players are currently actively assisting the junta - Russia, India, China, Thailand, and Sasakawa. It can be argued that other important international players – namely, the UN Special Envoy, Indonesia and ASEAN, EU, Switzerland, Norway, and the overwhelming majority of diplomats based in Yangon - are not enemies of the people of Myanmar, but they are not sincere friends either. They do not believe in the victory of the Spring Revolution. They do not see as their aim to contribute to the victory of the Spring Revolution. They strongly believe that the only solution for current situation is to bring all “stakeholders” to the negotiating table and to facilitate some deal with the junta and military. They want to “stabilize” and “normalize” the situation in Myanmar.
They are completely ignoring the fact that MAH does not want any negotiations with the NUG and that his primary goal in this moment is to crush the PDF resistance in Sagaing and Magway. Internationals wrongly believe that if they achieve a temporary ceasefire and negotiations between the junta and EROs, and if they start to deliver humanitarian aid to ERO controlled areas, that this will be the beginning of a gradual de-escalation of the war. They do not understand (or they pretend that they do not understand) that this will only mean stronger offensives against Sagaing and Magway and – marginalization of the NUG. This is how also well-intentioned international players are contributing to the potential weakening of the alliance of anti-junta forces.
Action points
It is not probable that the anti-junta alliance will be broken under this pressure, but it can be weakened and made ineffective. In order to prevent that and to regain strength for struggle against the junta, a few things are needed:
Firstly, it is important not to forget that MAH’s junta is very vulnerable and weak. The anti-junta alliance might have been under pressure, but the junta is under even bigger pressure and is cracking and bleeding even more. The junta and military are hated and rejected by the majority of the people of the country. The will of the people of Myanmar is standing against the junta.
Instead of accepting MAH’s offer to join a “federation of greed and corruption”, there is much bigger win–win possibility for all Myanmar ethnic groups in a future federal and democratic
country, which will not be built upon military repression and exploitative, predatory, kleptocratic rule by a narrow circle of military families and their business associates.
Secondly, some key NUG members should as soon as possible have informal but substantial, real life and not Zoom meeting talks with key ERO actors (K3C – Karen, Kachin, Karenni and Chin). The purpose is to re-align the key political and military actors who are actively participating in the anti-junta resistance. This would be to revive trust, to clarify who wants what and to assure each other that if they together win over the junta, everybody will get what they want.
This is the most important step. In this moment we do not have full commitment of all key stakeholders (who have real power) to actively participate in the common struggle. A mutual political deal is needed to revive an active and full alliance, instead of remaining in the current partial and not fully active alliance.
Thirdly, parallel with the process described above, there is a need for the NUG plus key EROs to form a team to deal with foreign affairs. It will be needed to deal in a mutually-coordinated manner with the opportunities offered by the NDAA and with ASEAN under Indonesian chairmanship. They need a common understanding between the NUG and key EROs over what are the joint talking points with internationals, what they say and “what to demand”.
Once they have that, there is a need for a delegation of the NUG + K3C going together to Jakarta, Washington, New York, London, Brussels, Tokyo, and New Delhi.
If internationals manage to get anti-junta actors in situations in which they talk with the NUG and EROs separately, the alliance will be on the losing side. Internationals will be able to manipulate stakeholders away from the goal of victory of the Spring Revolution over the junta.
Always have in mind that the majority of internationals do not want victory of the Spring Revolution because they do not think it is possible and because they do not know “what comes after”. That is why they want to bring everybody – including the junta and military – to the negotiating table. The danger is that in the end, the junta and military will be at that table, many EROs and political parties as well, but not the NUG and not the Spring Revolution.
There are already signals that some international players and some domestic “mediators” are opening channels for international engagement to the K3C without the NUG. It seems to me very dangerous to step on this slippery slope. It looks to me much better to have the NUG + K3C together and talking together with international players. This format NUG + K3C should be open to include other stakeholders, but we first need to strengthen and align “the core”.
Fourthly, we need another team which will make a clear strategy between the NUG + EROs and anti-junta civil society how they will collectively bargain with the international aid community.
The international aid community is not playing a fair game. They have their own interests. They have their biases. Many of them are hostages of the junta by continuing to keep offices in
Yangon and by being dependent on the junta issuing them entry visas. For that reason, they have strong tendencies to play the junta’s cards. It is important not to assume that the international aid community is a benign, well-minded partner. They have their own interests, which do not correspond with the aims and interests of the Spring Revolution.
For that reason, the anti-junta forces need to bargain with them, not to treat them as a genuine and trusted partner.
To be able to deal with the aid community effectively and in the interest of the Spring Revolution, there is a need to have a common strategy and a coordinating working team, which will include NUG representatives, EROs but also civil society actors. Otherwise, aid donors and the international aid community will simply divide them and implement aid policies in a way that serves their interests, not the potential recipients’ interests.
They have advantages. They have better information. They have better access and better relations with donors. They have financial resources to pay teams writing project proposals and doing aid management. They can travel around and meet the groups separately one by one.
However, if the NUG, EROs and anti-junta CSOs are able to collectively bargain with the international aid community, the anti-junta forces are in relatively strong negotiating position as well. UN agencies and INGOs cannot deliver aid without local actors. They have no mandate to provide aid without the involvement of local actors. They have no chance to access budgets for Myanmar without partnering with local CSOs.
If the various parties are negotiating one-by-one with them, it will be easy for the UN agencies and INGOs to pick up partner from the local CSOs which will be in a junior and subordinate position to them. If the groups coordinate, share information and if they act collectively and bargain, they can be an equal partner co-deciding how aid is delivered and how aid money is allocated.
Igor Blazevic for Mizzima.
The views expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of Mizzima.
